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Santa’s little helpers’ from Sears

December 12, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Keith Schell

Last Christmas, I sent out a story for publication to this newspaper titled, ‘The Sears Christmas Wishbook’, describing the joy that the Wishbook catalogue brought to the nation on Christmas morning of every year. 

But not long after I sent out my Wishbook story, I got a response from a retired friend of mine who was a delivery driver for Sears for 20 years. After he read my column, he sent me an email that offered me a completely different point of view on the whole Sears’ experience of the yuletide holiday.

In order to make a child’s wish come true at Christmas, every year the preparations for the creation of the Sears Christmas Wishbook had to start long before December. 

Serving Ontario by truck and the rest of the country by rail, the Sears Canada corporate printing plant in Rexdale, Ont. (a suburb of Toronto), always needed long lead times to accommodate the sheer volume of printing and distribution of their countless seasonal catalogues. And because of that, the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalogues were always collated, printed, and delivered to all the Sears mail order outlets in the various regions by early September of every year in preparation for the annual December Christmas rush. 

To a man, the Sears delivery drivers used to dread the coming of September and the addition of the Wishbook catalogues to the volume of items they already had to deliver. At the height of the Wishbook’s popularity, the catalogues were thick and glossy and always printed on heavy gauge paper. And because of that, the addition of the sheer tonnage of gross weight of the skids of Christmas catalogues added considerable effort to the completion of the delivery driver’s usual nightly job.  

The peddle trailer (a trucking term for a trailer on a run with frequent delivery stops) usually had anywhere from one-half to three full skids of Wishbook catalogues for nightly delivery in whole or in part to the various regional mail order outlets, depending on how large the town was. Some smaller towns may only get one-half to one-quarter of a skid while other larger towns may get a whole skid. And that was on top of the rest of the regular items that had to be delivered to the various outlets every night.

At its peak, remember how heavy the Wishbook was as we made our want lists at Christmas? Averaging roughly 250 bundles a skid in bundles of 6-10 catalogues per bundle, a full skid of Wishbooks could easily weigh a thousand pounds! And when they weren’t delivering bundles by hand to the smaller outlets, the delivery driver had to use a handcart to move the skids around in the trailer or remove them from the trailer and deposit them in the rear storage area of the mail-order outlet where they happened to be. (To all the former and retired Sears drivers out there, I hope your back didn’t start aching again just thinking about it).       

Apparently, the Sears Christmas Wishbook brought yuletide joy to everyone in the country except those who had to deliver it!

This suggestion will probably get me a middle finger from all the former Sears delivery drivers reading this who got backaches from delivering the extra tonnage of Wishbooks across the nation for Christmas, but try to think of yourselves as Santa’s little helpers. Your September efforts in delivering the Wishbook catalogues to the various Sears outlets across the country for Christmas brought joy to millions of children on Christmas morning of every year.   

That may be be small consolation to you if you were at home having a loved one rub liniment on your sore back after your catalogue deliveries, but try to take heart in the thought that your efforts made children happy all over the nation on Christmas morning. You did good work.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all, and a very special salutation to all of Santa’s little helpers who delivered the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalogues back in the day!

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